Eco Schools and The Green Flag Award
Mersey Park Primary School has been awarded the Green Flag from Eco Schools for nearly 10 years now, after working on a series of projects to help the environment. We are very proud to fly our Eco School flag and will work hard to continue our efforts to promote environmental projects and raise awareness of our responsibility for our planet. We have a sustainability and climate action plan, which sets out our targets each year, as well as our annual Eco Flag application.
Every year, an Eco Team member is voted for in each class; one pupil voted for by their class from Years 1 to 6. We meet regularly to carry out our actions and discuss our progress in school and the wider community and world.
To achieve Green Flag status, we had to work on projects covering three main themes, over at least a two year period and present evidence of our impact. The themes we chose were: Litter, Biodiversity, Waste, School Grounds and Healthy Living.
Litter- – This is an obvious one to choose as litter can be an issue in our local environment, especially in our local park. The Eco Team carry out regular litter picks in the school grounds, school carpark and surrounding streets and park. We have also supported our local church, St Catherine’s, with their litter picks. As a whole school, we take part in Keep Britain Tidy’s Big School Clean Up each year.
Biodiversity and School Grounds – Our aims for this theme were to develop our school grounds to encourage more wildlife, including plants and to enable pupils to notice and appreciate the biodiversity in our local and worldwide environments. Over the last few years, we have made Mini Meadows, developed wild flower areas and allowed nature to ‘rewild’ certain parts of our school grounds and built a wildlife pond. We have bird feeders, hedgehog houses, log piles and Bug Hotels to encourage animals into our environment. We have created compost areas, which also encourage biodiversity. Extending out into our community and beyond, we take part in the annual Big Bird count and have supported charities such as the Hedgehog Sanctuary. In 2018-19, we took part in Chester Zoo’s Palm Oil initiative. In 2023-24, we achieved Gold Award from Hedgehog Schools and in 2025-26, we are part of a project to encourage understanding and care of foxes, through work with Wirral Fox Rescue. As part of our curriculum through Science, we look at habitats, including excellent visits to local parks such as Birkenhead Park and Royden Park, to explore their biodiversity. We have also worked on the RHS Garden Award scheme and are the proud owners of a Level 4 certificate!
Healthy Living- Again, this was an obvious theme choice for our school, as we were already doing so much as part of our curriculum, especially through Design Technology. Every year group has a Food and Nutrition project to complete as part of the DT curriculum, focussed very much on healthy foods. To extend this further, the PTA and Eco Team developed the school allotment, planted with a range of fruit and vegetables to be primarily used in our cooking. Our pupils see how vegetables and herbs are sown, grown, then help harvest, prepare and cook to create nutritious, healthy meals. They take a copy of the recipes home, in the hope they may pass on our message about healthy food and healthy lifestyles. Also as part of this theme, our pupils take part in activities such as Mile a Day walks and Fitness Friday, to highlight exercise as part of healthy living. We truly believe in a healthy mind as well as healthy body (each class has a Healthy Mind and Body Ambassador) and there are lessons and activities embedded in our curriculum to promote mental health and wellbeing, such as My Happy Mind, Wellbeing Day, breathing techniques and PSHE units.
The next steps.
We need to maintain our Eco Green Flag status every year and make sustainability an everyday part of school life.